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Frostic series continues with readings by award-winning duo

by Mark Schwerin

Oct. 28, 2011 | WMU News

Stern and Marcari

KALAMAZOO--Two accomplished poets will read from their works when the Gwen Frostic Reading Series continues at Western Michigan University.

Gerald Stern, winner of a National Book Award, and Anne Marie Macari, whose book "Ivory Cradle" won the American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize, will read at 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 3, in the Little Theatre.

Gerald Stern

Stern is the author of 15 books of poetry, including "This Time: New and Selected Poems," which won the National Book Award in 1998. A collection of personal essays titled "What I Can't Bear Losing: Notes From a Life" was released in paperback in fall 2009.

Stern has taught at the University of Pittsburgh, Columbia University and for 15 years was senior poet at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He has won numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, three National Endowment of the Arts Fellowships, the Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts for the state of Pennsylvania, the Lamont Poetry Prize and the Ruth Lilly Prize.

He was the first Poet Laureate of New Jersey, serving from 2000 to 2002, and was the recipient of both the 2005 Wallace Stevens Award for mastery in the art of poetry and the 2005 National Jewish Book Award for poetry. He has been published in leading magazines, including The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Nation, and The Atlantic. In 2006, Stern was named a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. A new book of poems, "Save the Last Dance," was released in 2008. He was the 2010 recipient of the Medal of Honor by the Academy of Arts and Letters.

Anne Marie Macari

Macari's most recent book, "She Heads Into the Wilderness," was published by Autumn House Press in 2008. She followed the success of "Ivory Cradle" with "Gloryland." Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines, such as: The Iowa Review, The American Poetry Review and TriQuarterly. Macari directs the Drew University MFA Program in Poetry and Poetry in Translation.